OITM Says Goodbye
Celebrating 21 Years

      The decision was difficult. Sitting in the basement of the Champlain Mill last month, all seven Mountain Pride Media Board members pored over financial statements. For months, the organization that publishes Out in the Mountains had been relying on its savings and scrambling for donations to cover monthly shortfalls, while board members tried to restructure staff and operations and build a revenue model that worked. Though the monthly expense gap was closing, progress was not fast enough. Available funds were just a couple of hundred dollars — even before staff was paid for November's work.
       The organization could not afford to go on.
        After 21 years of service to the community, Out in the Mountains comes to a close with this final issue.
      We want the community to know how we got here. But we also want to celebrate and honor the love, energy, time and passion put forth by so many people — board members and editors, writers and distributors, donors and advertisers, and a host of other volunteers — for the last two decades.

      How we got here
      Dan Brink, former Board president and volunteer for eight years, said he first knew there were problems about four years ago, when the budget had to be cut by a third.
       Activity had increased exponentially starting in 1999, Brink said, when the Vermont Supreme Court told the legislature to grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples had in marriage.
      "With all the attention that brought to Vermont, it also brought volunteers, donations and grants" to the paper, Brink said. Subscriptions went up, as did advertising dollars.
       But the energy and money were not sustained.
       "During the good years, we tried to convert it (from mostly volunteer) into an organization that was paying the key staff," Brink said. Eventually, the editor's tiny stipend grew into a modest part-time salary, and a part-time operations manager was hired.
      "It never quite worked," Brink said. "We were never able to get an advertising model that would allow for that after things got more difficult."
      The economy shifted and national advertising — a substantial revenue source — dropped off, Brink said. Volunteer energy, still vital to the operation, also dwindled.
      Last spring, the two remaining board members, president Brian Cote and secretary Greg Weaver, met with community members seeking involvement and support. A strategic planning group recommended hiring a full-time executive director to focus on raising money and managing advertising, distribution and operations. Weaver was hired. But everyone knew it was a risk; money was already tight.
      Cote said the struggle to nurture new board members — and the workload the small board carried — perhaps caused them to lose sight of daily operational struggles the paper had had for years. He said it was perhaps naïve for the Board and strategic planning committee to think a full-time executive director could simultaneously do all of the operational tasks and bring in money.
      But the reality, too, said both Cote and Brink, is that the media landscape has shifted. While 20 years ago, there was no Internet and no mainstream coverage of gay issues, now there are both. Among queer media, Out in the Mountains has been one of a handful of nonprofit newspapers in the country. Others had folded, or had become for-profit.
      Also, MPM decided long ago it would not sell ads for tobacco, alcohol or bathhouses, which often provide key revenue to for-profit LGBT papers.
      "There were healthier ways to be gay, and we wanted to explore those," said Euan Bear, a former OITM editor. "The choice has cost us, because we chose to not be exploitive of our own community."
       Cote said he thinks changing ad policy would only have been a short-term fix.
       "I think people in the community would have had an incredibly difficult time with that sort of advertising in our newspaper," Cote said. "We would have continued to lose both traditional advertisers, and I think, our subscriptions would have dropped even further."

       Out in the Mountains was created because politicians weren't listening.
       After Vermont's first Pride march, according to Howdy Russell, an OITM founder, the organization Vermonters for Lesbian and Gay Rights formed. A forerunner to today's Equality Vermont, VLGR tried to talk with legislators about equal rights and protections for all Vermonters. But candidates and legislators did not respond to surveys, nor would they talk with group representatives.
       "What emerged pretty quickly was we weren't going to have any clout unless we had a way to inform the voters the way we wanted to inform them," Russell said. "As soon as we had a vehicle to spread the word among people who wanted to hear, we got a different response from politicians."
       Russell said he believes the paper has added to the sense that "this is a community to be reckoned with" in Vermont.
       "When I look at what did OITM achieve, I look at what did we achieve," Russell said. "I think they're pretty inseparable over the course of the last 20-plus years. And I think there's a lot — civil rights bill, adoption, hate crimes, HIV nondiscrimination, civil unions, everything."
       Five years into the paper, early collective member Carrie Coy called it "exciting" to work on the paper: gathering as a group to read and edit, laying out the paper by hand, collating it, and getting it ready to distribute to the few dozen subscribers and to locations in Burlington, Montpelier, and Brattleboro [see OITM story from February 1991 on page 8].
       Barb Dozetos was editor when OITM turned 13. During her two-plus years, she saw the creation of R.U.1.2? Community Center and the Samara Foundation. OITM got its own office. But what changed her most was her front-row seat in the legislative debate around civil unions. She was there more than some of the lobbyists, she said; legislators knew who she was and who she represented.
       "It was important to be a visible presence there all the time, just like the Associated Press and every news camera," Dozetos said. "I know it made a difference."
       Dozetos said she still thinks about the day the House Judiciary Committee voted aloud on whether to support civil unions or full marriage.
       "At least half the committee afterwards came up to me personally and apologized, some of them in tears, because they knew they had to do something politically, but in their hearts knew it wasn't right," she said.
       "It was a phenomenal place to be," Dozetos added. "It was exhausting. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. I knew I was watching history being made."
       Euan Bear said the big issues during her four years as editor included the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the criminal prohibition of sodomy in Texas. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the state's Equal Protection Clause. The groundwork was laid for a gender identity bill that would have protected the employment rights of transgender people.
       What she is most proud of, however, are the community profiles she started to help inform people how Vermonters were living; the Youth Zone that gave voice to teens; and giving space to Vermont cartoonists.
       "There's a lot of talent here," Bear said of the paper's many contributors. "We wanted to be a showcase for that talent. And I think we did a pretty good job."

       The future
       Out in the Mountains has had ups and downs over the years, supporters say. The paper ceased publication more than once. And it always came back.
       "The strongest role the paper had in the community," Bear said, "was letting us feel connected."
       Some people have expressed concern about how people will stay connected – and informed – without the paper. Some have talked about the possibility of an online edition. Some have talked about listservs and blogs.
       "I think the community will come together in the not-too-distant future and find a way to provide a voice for our community," Cote said.

Kim Howard is secretary of the Mountain Pride Media board.

A TIME TO CELEBRATE! We invite you to celebrate all that has been accomplished by joining us at R.U.1.2? Community Center on Saturday, December 9 from 2-4 pm for an open house. Dozens of dedicated people have given enormous pieces of their lives to this paper so that all of us could be informed, so that we could help make change. Our state is a far better place because of them. Please celebrate what they have given to us and to everyone who has yet to arrive in Vermont.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people whose voices we'd love to have heard in this farewell: former board members, contributors, photographers, donors, and readers we simply could not reach by our print deadline. We'd still love to hear how Out in the Mountains made a difference in your lives. Please send an email to voices [at] mountainpridemedia [dot] org. We've posted the responses we've received so far, and we'll continue to do so.

We've also posted important announcements related to the paper's closure; please take a moment to check them out.